Advances in the field of wireless LAN technology have resulted in the emergence of publicly accessible wireless LANs (e.g., “hot spots”) at rest stops, cafes, libraries and similar public facilities. Presently, wireless LANs offer mobile terminal users access to a private data network, such as a Corporate Intranet, or a public data network such as the Internet. The relatively low cost to implement and operate a wireless LAN, as well as the available high bandwidth (usually in excess of 10 Megabits/second) makes the wireless LAN an ideal access mechanism through which the mobile terminal user can exchange packets with an external entity.
A mobile terminal user accessing a wireless LAN can send and receive traffic having different QoS levels/service levels. For example, a mobile terminal user could send voice traffic, which has greater sensitivity to latency delays than data. Different types of data can have different QoS level/service level requirements. For example, streaming video typically requires far greater bandwidth than simple text messages. Present day Wireless LANs typically provide limited QoS levels/service levels. For example, an optional feature of the IEEE 802.11 protocol standard utilized by many wireless LANs requires polling of each user by an associated Wireless LAN Access Point (AP) in order to grant user access, thus permitting implementation of one or more limited QoS level/service level control schemes. With the ETSI/Hipperlan2 standard, the wireless LAN utilizes the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to provide a connection-oriented mechanism whereby each mobile terminal user can establish a communications session with the AP and negotiate for radio resources to obtain a desired QoS levevservice level. However, such present day schemes for controlling QoS levels/service levels only address management of the radio resources of a given AP. Such schemes do not address the management of resources within a wired network associated with the wireless LAN.
Thus, there is a need for a technique for managing QoS levels within a wired network associated with a wireless LAN.